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MobileActive Convergence

[cross-posted to EchoDitto]Toronto — I’m here for MobileActive, which is shaping up to be one of the best conferences i’ve ever attended — billed as “the first global strategy meeting of activists using mobile phones in campaigns and public interest work.” No boring panels, just good old-fashioned knowledge-sharing and collaboration among an impressive group of 30-odd practitioners from the Congo, Philippines, Argentina, the U.S., South Africa, the U.K., among other places.I had a vague sense prior to arriving that this was going to be a unique experience, and that’s turning out to be true Marty Kearns‘s endorsement was all i needed beforehand, knowing that he has a knack for avoiding the fluff and getting straight to the heart of some critical issues surrounding network-centric organizing and the environmental movement, two shared interests of ours. (I later learned that this entire event was Marty’s brainchild, from his home at Green Media Toolshed).Some of my major interests here are…– Figuring out how to measure/track the viral, p2p spread of information over a mobile network– Overcoming global interoperability re carriers, short-numbers, and photo sharing– Improving understanding of society/individuals’ natural behavior and use of mobile medium compared to internetWe’re lucky enough to be working with some quality event facilitators from Aspiration — Katrin and Gunner are an eccentric, energetic, and appropriately confident pair who have done an incredible job managing logistics and setting the right tone for these 3 days.Some fascinating people doing incredible things here. More on that later, but i’ll note now that our friend, Eric, of DevelopmentSeed is here as well as Emily from WorldChanging and Ben from MobileVoter.Two more very full days ahead of us, so if you want to follow along…â€¢ Proceedings and meetings notesâ€¢ Photosâ€¢ Blog postsâ€¢ Technorati tag